Sharon Stone's relationship with Sam Raimi was quick, and now it is dead

If one had to describe Sharon Stone’s working relationship with director Sam Raimi by a movie title, it would, ironically, be The Quick And The Dead. Stone hired Raimi onto Quick And The Dead after seeing Army Of Darkness, vouching so emphatically for the cult director that she later admitted she was banned from the studio for eight years for doing so. The favor was not repaid because Stone doesn’t think Raimi has “loyalty.” Speaking at the Torino Film Festival in Italy (via IndieWire) last week, Stone compared Raimi, whose films she “really liked” and whom she believed was very intelligent and very funny, to Martin Scorsese. In Stone’s estimation, because of Scorsese’s Italian ancestry, “he has loyalty, he has that family feeling, and because of it Marty and I still have a relationship, and because of it Marty and I still work together.” Meanwhile, Raimi “doesn’t have loyalty” and “doesn’t have family.” Sorry, Ted.

“Sam was a kid, and he doesn’t have loyalty, he doesn’t have family, he didn’t ever talk to me again, he didn’t thank me, he didn’t hire me again, he didn’t acknowledge the relationship,” Stone said. “Marty, because I worked so hard and because I admired him so much, our relationship continues today. There is depth there.”

After working together on Casino, which came out the same year as Raimi’s film, Stone and Scorsese reunited for the 2019 Bob Dylan “documentary” Rolling Thunder Revue. That’s Scorsese for you. To Stone, it was that “Italian thing” where “in Italy, when you go to make dinner, you buy your fruit from one guy, you buy your meat from one guy, you buy your fish from another guy, and these people are the people you go to. They’re your people.” Scorsese has that. When you need an oddball, Looney Tunes-inspired Western, you go to your Evil Dead guy, who doesn’t call his Basic Instinct guy for anything.

“My culture is both English and deeply French. We have these almost genetic, familial cultures. We believe in each other. We work together. We love each other. We fight together, and it’s important. Marty has that.” As far as we know, Raimi isn’t Italian, but he did study abroad in Milan in 1978. That has to count for something.